One month ago, Englewood police detective Carl Kisselman walked an 8-year-old boy up to the Colorado Law Enforcement Memorial and watched as the boy pressed his hand on the name of officer Jeremy Bitner.

He watched as the boy ran his fingers along the name, "across the edges, the bumps and the voids," Kisselman recalled Friday. How cruel it was, he thought, that such a heavy weight had been placed into such tiny fingers: Asher Bitner and his sister will know their father more as an engraving in a granite slab than as the dad who cheered them at soccer games and took them on rainy campouts.

And that is why Kisselman, a brawny detective who confides that emotions make him uncomfortable, stood before a judge Friday and pleaded for a worthy sentence for the man who took Bitner's life.

Officer Jeremy Bitner (handout)

"Conner Donohue took away these children's father," Kisselman, at times near tears, said. "Not just for the time he spends in prison. But for the rest of their lives."

After an emotionally wrenching hearing that showed how devastating a bad decision can be, Judge Marilyn Antrim sentenced Donohue to 10 years in prison for vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, leaving the scene of an accident and driving drunk. In doing so, she called Bitner — an Army veteran who was 39 when he died — "the epitome of what a police officer should be."

Just after midnight on Memorial Day last year, Donohue crashed his SUV into Bitner and another man, Kevin Montoya, on South Broadway near Belleview Avenue as the two men stood outside Bitner's patrol car. Investigators believe Donohue's blood-alcohol level was .276 at the time of the crash. Three hours later, it was still .214, prosecutor Jason Siers said Friday.

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The collision threw Bitner 120 feet - and Montoya half that far — and left impressions of Bitner's gun and flashlight in Donohue's front bumper. Donohue kept driving and was arrested several miles away, after being followed by a witness who relayed Donohue's location to police.

Donohue, who was only 20 at the time, had been drinking at a party earlier that night and insisted on driving himself home, prosecutors said. Investigators believe he had been driving around lost and drunk — and, possibly, continuing to drink while behind the wheel — for as long as two hours before the crash. Friends told detectives Donohue had driven drunk before.

And, shortly after the crash, Donohue was still so drunk during a police interrogation he said he didn't even know where the crash happened or that he had hit anybody.

The crash seriously injured Montoya. Bitner, unconscious, lay in a street gutter and bled into the arms of a fellow police officer.

"Jeremy never woke up," Bitner's widow, Tina, said in court Friday. "He never responded. He never squeezed my hand, and he never said goodbye."

"At some point, Mr. Donohue will get another chance at life, and his life will be what he makes of it. But Jeremy was never given any options."

Donohue on Friday told the Bitner family and the dozens of Englewood police officers crowded into the courtroom how sorry he is for what he did.

Earlier, family members and friends of Donohue's had talked about what a promising young man he was. Honor-roll student. Model employee. Devoted friend. Prom king. He was taking classes at Metropolitan State University of Denver and hoping to become a news reporter.

"No one knows what will be the fate of their children," Donohue's mother, Keo, said between sobs during Friday's hearing. "We raised Conner with so much love and support and taught him right from wrong. ... We ask all those involved in this case, or not involved in this case, to take a second to think about what could happen. Please do not drive intoxicated. This could happen to anyone."

Donohue has been in treatment for alcohol addiction since the crash. He's volunteered at Craig Hospital, hopes to become active in anti-drunk driving campaigns and is a low risk to re-offend, according to a pre-sentencing report that recommended against a prison sentence, Donohue's lawyer said.

When it came time for Donohue to make a statement, he spoke with a practiced self-consciousness that gradually eroded into chokes of emotion.

"I know that night I was the person who deserved to die," he said near the end of his statement. "And I will do whatever it takes to preserve officer Bitner's legacy by doing whatever I can to prevent drunk driving in our community."

But for prosecutors and Bitner's supporters, that could not be enough. Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler urged a sentence that would send a message: The most important thing Donohue could have done to prevent drunk driving is not to have driven the night he killed Jeremy Bitner.

"That is not a mistake," Brauchler said. "That is not an accident. That is reckless, deadly behavior."

When the sentence was read, the sound of quiet sobbing from both Donohue's and Bitner's sides of audience filled the courtroom. As Donohue was led away in handcuffs, a relative called out "We love you, Conner. We love you buddy."

Outside the courtroom, Tina Bitner went one by one to the men and women in crisp blue uniforms and hugged each of them. When she reached Tracy Jones, the officer who was with Bitner when he was struck and has struggled with guilt ever since, she leaned in close.

"Hang in there," she whispered into his ear. "There's nothing you could have done. Nothing. Nothing."

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